| This dissertation attempts to examine the Internet through the lenses of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and history in an effort to reconsider the impact of the Internet on life outside its wires. The overarching goal of this work is to effectively describe the Internet through the collection of practices that comprise it, and in the process, offer fresh perspectives to the meaning and significance of this socio-technical phenomenon. Key sites of analysis include knowledge, power, credibility, narrative, democracy, and semiotics.;The dissertation begins with a historical analysis of the Internet's development. As part of the analysis, I emphasize how representational media impact the relationship between humans and their knowledge, as evidenced in the differences in the organization of information between codex books and hypertext. This change in relationship is also reflected in the manner by which knowledge is made on the Internet, one that mirrors descriptions of power/knowledge advanced by Michel Foucault. A primary finding of the dissertation is that knowledge on the Internet is created through a circuit of exchange between those that produce, consume, and sort information on the Internet.;Also important to this work is the recognition that the Internet is much more than an information network. Specifically, it offers unique opportunities for the exploration and construction of the user's sense self. I identify three important narrative dimensions of the Internet---surfing, sharing, and submerging---that form the basis of the storied nature of the Net.;The Internet also represents a unique opportunity to examine linguistic evolution and an exciting development for those interested in linguistics and literary theory. It presents an opportunity to think about the fundamental notions of literature and language---the author, the reader, the text, the construction of meaning---in an entirely novel way. Part of this dissertation is dedicated to exploring these possibilities by feeling out the boundaries of structural and post-structural understandings of linguistics and the Internet. Alternative understandings of hyperlinks and search engines that emphasize the connection between words and their meaning are offered as a result of the work in this dissertation.;Several chapters of this dissertation challenge past practices in Internet studies, including the method of assessment of e-democracy. I propose that when discussing democracy and the Internet, one should move the conversation away from singular notions of democracy and the Internet and embrace a more pluralistic understanding of both. Using John Dewey's sense of becoming, I offer a comprehensive continuum for the evaluation of democratic activity on the Internet, as well as a pluralistic understanding of the Internet. Finally, this dissertation also challenges how scholars of Internet studies construct the notion of credibility, arguing that framing Internet credibility decisions as a staged-process is valuable but limiting. In addition to credibility algorithms, I propose the value of intuition and perception for assessing information on the Internet. |
